Engineer Guide (Mass Effect 2)
Engineer is a magician in Mass Effect 2 as much as Adept which means rather than shooting enemies he will distract and eliminate them using his powers. Having a good set of crowd control and damage-dealing powers it's a very interesting choice to make. Overview Engineer has to rely on his powers more than his guns (SMGs and Heavy Pistols) to get the job done. He doesn't have as good crowd control as Adept and doesn't have quickly recharging damage-dealing powers like Pull and Throw used together which means most of the combat time has to be spent in hiding and enemies should be kept at medium to long distance. Finding a sweet safe spot and launching one Incinerate or Overload after another from its cover is the most common tactics for Engineer in combat in ME2. Engineer Overview Engineer Pros and Cons Pros: *Engineer’s powers are made to distract or control enemies through use of AI hacking, Cyro blast, and Combat Drone. *Combat Drone will distract any kind of enemy, even bosses. *The short cooldown period of the Combat Drone means that while the drone is active, you can focus your other powers on the distracted enemies. *Overload(for shields) and Incinerate(for armor) are great for stripping the defenses of any heavily fortified enemy. Cons: *Enemy Assault Rifles and submachine guns will eat through an Engineer’s defense if facing the enemy head on. *Limited to heavy pistol and submachine gun for good majority of the game. *This class is highly tactical. Don’t expect to rush into a room of enemies and fight them head on. *Careful planning is a must. Notable Bonus Powers With Overload and Incinerate dealing with shields and armor, the only protection type an Engineer can't deal with is Biotic Barrier. This means taking Warp Ammo and using SMG to bring down Barriers is strongly advised for all Engineer builds. Picking team version of Warp Ammo will allow you to deal with Harbinger and other protected enemies, especially on higher difficulty levels much easier. Squad Members and required abilities Due to lack of ability to deal with Barriers, companions with maximized Warp skill like Miranda or Thane will be very valuable assets for a team led by an Engineer. Mechanics with leveled up Cryo Blast will like Grunt a lot since he often charges close-by enemies with his melee attack, Incendiary Ammo and Krogan shotgun and a well aimed Cryo strike in advance of his charge can allow him to thin enemy ranks very fast. Not to mention his inherent abilities to be team's damage sponge, tank and damage dealer. Jack is also an interesting choice with her Warp Ammo (especially team version) and Shockwave. All technical companions are redundant at best and shouldn't be picked outside of very specific tech-oriented missions where synthetics will be the main opponent. However the ability to swarm enemies with three combat drones at once can have its uses at times. Recommended builds and explanations Overall Engineer build: Overload-3/2 Incinerate-3/2 Combat Drone(Explosive Drone)-4 Cryo Blast(Full)-4 Ai Hacking(improved)-4 Tech mastery(Mechanic)-4 Bonus Talent:TBA Advance Weapon Training: Assault Rifle Explanations: The Combat Drone is your bread and butter. Engineers have weak health and shields therefore they need a bait, or a distraction. The combat drone is the answer! The reason why explosive drone is picked over attack drone is because the explosive drone does 100 damage in a 6 meter radius, while the attack drone does 40 damage per 3 seconds on an individual enemy. Both drones have the same health too, so it doesn't make any sense to go for the attack drone. To make your drones stronger, specializing tech mastery to the mechanic is a must! Both Mechanic and explosive drone is a must on every engineer. Not to mention with that 3 second cooldown period, you can keep sending suicide bombers everytime you see an enemy. I maxed out Cryo blast to Full cryo blast, and ai hacking to improve ai hacking so that I can have more crowd control options. Maxing both Cryo blast and Ai hacking is more on the tactical side, but if you want prefer more destruction and damage, you can forgo these skills and concentrate on incinerate and overload. You also get to choose one other weapon about half way through the game to use. My Specialty weapon was an easy choice. Since the Engineer did not have the shields for close combat nor for enough time to line up a sniper shot, I chose the assault rifle as my primary way to take down armor. Taking down armor was crucial in order to use Cryo Blast as enemies will only be frozen in their health state. Notes Weapons and Equipment Engineers get unique discount when researching equipment so upgrading is very easy. If Miranda and Thane are chosen to be the companions for their Heavy Warp skill, upgrading SMG to maximum and getting stronger version of it from Tali's recruitment mission is a very cheap and easy route to bring squad's damage up pretty fast. It's also crucial to get all the techs that reduce cooldown of Engineer abilities since all of them except for Cryo Blast are on a very long in combat conditions 6s cycle. Tech damage is a no-brainer. To strengthen biotic allies, Biotic damage and cooldown upgrades also can't be neglected. Finally if Grunt joins the team to charge at frozen enemies, it's required to get him a better shotgun or assault rifle as well as upgrade his vitality. The Carnifex hand cannon is also useful because it is fairly effective agains barriers. Category:Guides Category:Mass Effect 2